Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

The val­i­dat­ing statute to give retroac­tive le­gal-stand­ing to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) and the con­struc­tion sec­tor was in­tro­duced in the Sen­ate by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie yes­ter­day, even though Ude­cott has tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the en­quiry that could shut it down.

Je­re­mie ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with moves to pro­tect the par­tic­i­pants, the ex­pen­di­ture and the com­mis­sion. "I am com­plete­ly sat­is­fied. It is my work so I must be sat­is­fied with it. I would not sign off on it un­less I am sat­is­fied," he said in an in­ter­view, dur­ing the tea break of yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the Sen­ate. "Well, the bill has been in­tro­duced. It has been in­tro­duced. They are do­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive arrange­ments as soon as we come back from the tea break. There will be copies avail­able to the me­dia.

"Yes, it will be (the first time that the Op­po­si­tion would be see­ing it). It has just been laid. They will have to have a look at it."

His com­ments fol­lowed the Sep­tem­ber 7 abor­tion of the fourth hear­ing of the in­quiry, which sought to ex­am­ine the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project. It would al­so ex­am­ine ev­i­dence from Carl Khan, who was mar­ried to the wife of Ude­cott's chair­man, Calder Hart, that al­leged Hart's broth­er-in-law was a di­rec­tor of CH De­vel­op­ment and Con­struc­tion Ltd, which re­ceived a $368 mil­lion con­tract for the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er project.

Je­re­mie: I nev­er lose my cool

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie sought to de­bunk con­cerns about his state of com­po­sure ear­li­er in the week af­ter de­liv­er­ing crit­i­cisms about the Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Mar­tin Daly, in the 2009/2010 na­tion­al bud­get de­bate in the sen­ate. "At this time, (I have no re­sponse to Mr Daly's re­but­tal) of course not. I nev­er lose my cool. Do I look like I am los­ing my cool?" Je­re­mie asked.